Mara

In modern Dievturiba, Mara is the highest-ranking goddess, a feminine Dievs. She may be thought as alternate side of God (Like in Yin Yang). Other goddesses, sometimes all other goddesses, are considered her alternate aspects. Mara may have been the same goddess as Lopu mate as well.

She is the patroness of all the feminine duties (children, cattle), patroness of all the economic activities ("God made table, Mara - bread"), even money and markets. Being the alterante side of God, she takes away with her the body after person's death while God (Dievs) taking the soul. She is the goddess of land, it is called The Mara land.

In western Latvia, and to a lesser degree in the rest of Latvia, she was strongly associated with Laima, and may have been considered the same deity.

The festival Maras was held in her honor every August 15.
Alternative: Marsava (Western Latvia), Moschel, Marha

The ogress who hags people when sleeping is also called Mara. People feel pressure on their chest, and some people report that they observed Mara laying on their chest sometimes choking their necks, and mostly accompanying with sleep paralysis.

See also: incubus, succubus, Mara experience, Lucid dreaming, Kama

In the Bible, Naomi called herself Mara after she suffered the deaths of her husband and her two sons. -Ruth nn:mm

Mara was the nickname of career diplomat and former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari.

In Buddhism Mara is the demon that tempted Gautama Buddha trying to seduce him with the vision of beautiful women. In Buddhist cosmology, Mara is personified as the embodiment of unskilfulness, the "death" of the spiritual life. He is a tempter, distracting us from practising the spiritual life by making the mundane alluring or the negative seem positive. The early Buddhists, however, rather than seeing Mara as a demonic, virtually all-powerful Lord of Evil, regarded him as more of a nuisance. Many episodes concerning his interactions with the Buddha have a decidedly humorous air to them. In traditional Buddhism four senses of the word "mara" are given. Firstly, there is klesa-mara, or Mara as the embodiment of all unskilful emotions. Secondly, mrtyu-mara, or Mara as death, in the sense of the ceaseless round of birth and death. Thirdly, skandha-mara, or Mara as metaphor for the entirety of conditioned existence. Lastly, devaputra-mara, or Mara the son of a god, that is, Mara as an objectively existent being rather than as a metaphor. Early Buddhism acknowledged both a literal and "psychological" interpretation of Mara. Whichever way we ourselves understand the term, Mara has power only to the extent that we give it to him.